


The Good, The Perfect, and The Deeply Flawed

by orphan_account



Series: Stony Limits Cannot Hold Love Out [3]
Category: Supergirl (TV 2015)
Genre: Coming Out, F/F, Polyamory
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-03-20
Updated: 2017-03-20
Packaged: 2018-10-08 14:08:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings, No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,817
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10388394
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/orphan_account/pseuds/orphan_account
Summary: Lena, Kara and Cat all come out to their respective mothers about their relationship.





	

Lena paid a visit to Lillian in prison.  It amazed her that her mother managed to maintain that frosty dignity of hers, even in prison grays.  She’d somehow managed to keep them pressed and her hair immaculate.  And that jawline that could cut glass, so like Lena’s own that people often mistook them for being biological mother and daughter.  So proud and cold.  Lena would always hold some twisted admiration for her mother’s relentlessness.  They sat across from each other at a steel table in a poorly lit room full of steel tables, watched from all sides by armed guards.

“To what do I owe the honor of a visit from my estranged daughter?”  

Lena’s heart pounded.  Her mother’s emotions were, even now, difficult to read.  A jumble of rage and unfocused longing and something slow and icy.  “I can’t pay my mother a visit in prison?”

“You’re the reason I’m here,”  Lillian pointed out.  “So.  You must want something.  Or did you just come to gloat?”

Lena stared at her for a moment.  “I came to tell you something.”

Lillian’s brows drew together, quizzical.  “Is that so?”

“Yes.”  Lena folded her hands and stared at her mother for a long moment.  “I want you to know that I’m gay.”

Lillian snorted.  “You think I didn’t know that, Lena?”

Lena gave her a wry half-smile.  “I suppose I should have expected that.  Have your goons trail me to the gay district?  I hope they got a nice eyeful.”

Lillian’s face was tight, almost expressionless.  “As if I care.”  She sighed.  “No, what troubles me, Lena, is that you might not be choosing the best mates.  Is it true, as I’ve heard, that you’ve been seeing Cat Grant?”

Lena folded her arms.  “Mother,” she said slowly, “I actually feel I’ve chosen the best mates anyone could ask for.”  She leaned forward.  “Cat Grant is brilliant, and Kara Danvers is brave, and they both are kind, loving, caring people who love this world and want to protect it.  They treasure life.  All life, Mother.  Not just human life.”

Lillian kept her frozen smile.  “Earth is for humans first, dear, you know that.”  She paused.  “And why mention that little reporter?  You dated her too, did you?  Despite being utterly out of her league?”

“No,” Lena answered.  She tried to keep the smugness out of her tone.  “Present tense, Mother.  I am in a relationship with both of them.  They make me happy.   They’re good, and kind, so help me, Mother, they love me.  I know what it is to be loved, now.  God knows I never got that from you.”

Lillian looked wounded.  “You know why, Lena.”

“I don’t care why.  The point is, this is the last time you’re going to see me, if I have anything to say about it.  All I ever wanted was for you to love me like you loved Lex, and you never did, and the reasons why don’t really matter now.”  She felt her own eyes welling up as Lillian sat there in frozen silence.  “I’m not going to waste any more of my time trying to wring love out of someone who doesn’t know how to give it.”

“So you’re going to throw your own mother aside for some sort of … deviancy with these two women?  Good God, do you actually even…”

“Yes.  We have sex.  A lot.  And it’s fantastic.  I hope that thought tortures you at night.”  She smiled now, her eyes still wet but a savage light coming into them.  “I hope you hate me for it. I hope you disown me.”  She paused, tilted her head, regarding her for a moment.  “In fact, please, for the love of God, please disown me.  I know now what it feels like to be loved by someone who isn’t trying to extract something from me every single moment, every single breath of every single interaction.”

Lillian came as close as Lena ever saw her to clutching her pearls.  “I would never!”

“You would if it suited you.”  Lena stood up, lifted her chin, and gazed down at her.  “I hope you decide that it does.”

She walked away from the table.  “Lena, I’m only looking out for your best–”

“Goodbye, Mother,” she interrupted firmly.  And she stalked away.

  
  
  


**************

  
  


“So,” Eliza began, as she and Kara chopped vegetables for a salad.  “It seems like every time I call you these days, you’re at Cat’s place.”

Kara nodded.  She’d come home to Midvale to visit for the weekend, and they were cooking dinner together the way they did on those occasions.  

“Ah, yeah, that’s true, I guess,” she hedged.  She knew she was going to have to tell Eliza about Cat and Lena sooner or later, but she hadn’t really had a chance to think about how she was going to present it.

“So?”  Eliza pressed.  “Anything I should know?  Or am I going to have to torture it out of your sister?”

Kara smiled uncomfortably.  “Yeah, um… I… hadn’t really figured out how I was going to tell you about it.”

Eliza smiled.  “So, I have two gay daughters.”  She chuckled.  “That’s fine.  You didn’t really think you’d have to present it to me in some special way, did you?”

Kara scratched behind her ear, stalling for a moment.  “Well, that’s not the only thing about it.”

Eliza sighed.  “I know she’s a lot older than you, Kara.  I don’t judge that way, I thought you knew that.”

Kara shook her head.  “That’s not it either.”  She didn’t really know how to present this in a soft-pedaled way, so she just took a breath and blurted it out.  “It’s … Cat and I are together but, you know my friend Lena?”

“Yes?”

“Well, she and I are also together.  With Cat.”

Eliza nodded.  “Hm, I see.”  She thought about this for a moment.  “And how long has that been?”

“Uh…”  Kara thought for a moment.  “About five months, I guess.”

Eliza tore off a bunch of lettuce and dropped it into the salad spinner.  “Are you happy?”

“Yeah!” Kara exclaimed.  “I know it sounds weird, but we really are in love with each other.  We really complement each other and care for each other and they both know my secret and we… it’s just… it’s good.”  She couldn’t help blushing a little. 

Eliza put the salad spinner down and put a hand on her shoulder.  “Then Kara, I couldn’t be happier for you.  It’s too bad that you felt you had to wait this long to tell me about it.”

“I guess…” Kara hesitated.  “I didn’t know how to explain it.  Because… I don’t always think of myself in the same ways as people think of me.”  She sighed.  “And you know, even on Krypton, triad relationships like ours weren’t something that people really talked about.  I had some vague idea that it existed, but… you know.”  She trailed off.  She looked up at Eliza and offered a lame half smile.  “I didn’t want to weird you out or anything.”

Eliza chuckled.  “Oh, sweetheart.  You know you’d have to try harder than that.  You don’t want to know some of the things I know about exobiology and alien sexuality.”

Kara reddened.  “Yeah, I probably don’t.”  She bounced on the balls of her feet, focusing on the pressure in the fiber of her calf muscles to distract herself from her anxiety.  “So you’re alright with it?”

Eliza nodded.  “As long as you are.”  She pulled Kara into a hug.  “You’d have to work pretty hard to freak me out, sweetie, and even harder to get me to stop loving you.”

Kara relaxed.

“So,”  Eliza sighed after a moment, “when do I get to actually meet these two women who make you so happy?”

  
  


****************

  
  


“Oh, honestly, Kitty, you’re not nearly as discreet as you think you are.”

Cat stared at her mother over their twin plates of overpriced Cobb salad.  “Oh, is that so?”

Catherine rolled her eyes.  “Well, of course.  There are all sorts of bisexual rumors about you, you must know that.  Aren’t you the Queen of All Media?”

Cat schooled herself to give her mother nothing more than a raised eyebrow.  “Until I confirm them, that’s all they are.  Rumors.”

Catherine stabbed at her salad, chewed on a bite of it for an overlong period, then sighed.  “Well, nevertheless, if this was supposed to be your big moment of telling me you’re lesbian or a bisexual lesbian or whatever you call yourselves, you can skip it.  I already know.”

Cat huffed.  She wished that her mother could ever muster anything remotely resembling maternal supportiveness.  It was better, she supposed, than some sort of scandalized reaction followed by an outright rejection.  “Well, that’s only part of it.”

“Oh, do tell,”  her mother responded disinterestedly, refilling her glass from the bottle of sparkling water on the table.

Cat shook her head.  “Ugh, why bother?  You don’t really care, do you?”  But some rebellious part of her wanted to tell her, wanted her to be scandalized and upset.

Her mother sipped her water and gave her that WASP-y, barely-offended look she’d perfected decades ago.  “I’m sure I don’t know what you mean by that, Kitty.  Of course I do, you’re my daughter.”

Cat scoffed, but plunged ahead.  “Well, then, since you really do seem to be dying to know, I’m in a polyamorous relationship with two other women and it’s going swimmingly.”

For once, Cat thought with satisfaction, she managed to get something out of her mother that was two clicks shy of a spit-take.  She leaned forward, her eyes bulging a little.  She pressed her lips together and swallowed visibly.  That was about as dramatic a reaction as one could ever get from her.  She paused, silent for a moment, then took her cloth napkin, dabbed at the corners of her mouth, gazing at Cat with an expression that was difficult to read at first, but slowly eased into one of legitimate interest.  

“Is that so?” she remarked, sounding surprised.  

“Yes.”  Cat sipped her own sparkling water and stared her mother down for a moment.  “Aren’t you going to tell me how shocking or inappropriate it is?”

“Oh,” Catherine replied archly, “on the contrary.  Finally, there’s something interesting to talk about with you.”

Of course.  She could never couch her statements as anything but insults, or at best, backhanded compliments.  Still, it wasn’t a rejection.  Something to be said for that, she supposed.  “Well, you know, being interesting to you is actually my one burning desire that guides me like a northern star,” she retorted.

“I’ve always wondered whether those really worked, but even if I ever wanted to try it, your father never would have,” Catherine went on, leaning forward.  “Tell me, do you go on dates all together or just two at a time?”

Cat sighed. God, the woman was wearying.  

 


End file.
